Hi All,
I think some of you are missing the point of a watermark. As the name implies, it should be almost transparent, water-like. I'm seeing ever increasing watermark strengths lately, and to be quite honest, they are on photos that are not really that spectacular. I understand we have the option in place to make the watermark as transparent or solid as possible, all the way up to 100%, but I'm seeing watermarks of 25-35% being applied right across the middle, or right on the tarmac. What's the point?

Please keep it to a minimum as possible. Also, please keep in mind that we do reserve the right to adjust watermark strenghts before photo approval. The watermark should be there to protect the photo, but at the same time, not to ruin the enjoyment for the viewer. Thanks for your cooperation in this matter.

I'm not using this function but I can maybe explain, why you are finding more watermarks lately. A german Blogger received lately a facture of an photographer, who's picture he used (not aviation!). It was a very popular picture in the web and the photographer not known. But with Google's new Picture search function, the photographer had found a lot of copies in the world. And the german users received a facture. Russian and chinese users also using the picture had no problem, the costs whould be to big to catch them.
Anyway, with some articles spread about this incident there where now also a lot of aircraft spotters on the run to try this new gadget of google and they had found some entire Blogs made with there photos !
So you can put One and One together why they are using much more visible marks nowadays.

I had this problem of "stolen" pictures myself :-(
This is the reason, why I place the watermark on my homepage in the middle of my pictures. I don't want, that it is to easy for the people to take the pictures and use them for their one purposes.......
Unfortunately we have the problem with stealing things (not only pictures) in a well known german forum. Maybe you understand, why some of the photographers use quite solid watermarks....
I only use the "normal" watermark at Airfighters, not to strong.

I just experienced an issue where a number of my images were lifted from here, the watermark cropped out, they were then posted to a flicker account and then made their way to Facebook. At some point I am going to put the watermark right down the fuselage.

Cheers,
Dave

“There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.” -Ernest Hemingway